The bar and restaurant operator has opened four Pizza Pizza outlets in Halifax Regional Municipality and wants to launch as many as 25 more across the region.

“There’s a lot of dough in pizza,” said Gary Muise, the company’s vice-president of operations.

The company’s eyeing St. John’s, N.L., Moncton and Saint John, N.B., as well as Charlottetown, P.E.I., for other potential locations.

“Then we look at the smaller towns — Sydney, Truro, New Minas — that type of stuff,” Muise said.

Grafton Connor was looking for a chain that wasn’t in Atlantic Canada, he said.

After doing some research, it set its sights on Pizza Pizza, attracted by everything from the chain’s operations, marketing and real estate development.

“There’s not too many of those unless you go to the States,” he said referring to Pizza Pizza.

“The stores are relatively small. You can do them in anywhere from 1,000 to 1,500 square feet. One thing we like about Pizza Pizza is their product is very, very fresh and their selections are great. So we figured it’s a good one to get into.”

Grafton Connor could have come up with its own pizza chain, but Ontario’s largest chain of pizzerias “have everything perfected,” Muise said.

“They have the phone systems, the buying, the recipes, and all the research and development. That’s their world and that’s kind of what we bought into.”

Grafton Connor added a local touch to its stores.

“We have donairs here where they don’t have them across Canada,” Muise said.

He couldn’t put a timeline on how long it will take to expand across the region.

“We have the rights for Atlantic Canada so we want to see how it goes and take it from there and start developing it,” Muise said.

“We’re going to really feel them out first. It’s been two years since we opened our first one and then we made the big push with these last three in the last six months or so.”

The company has Pizza Pizza locations in Halifax on Grafton Street and on Joseph Howe Drive, Peakview Way in Bedford South and Forest Hills Parkway in Cole Harbour. Each one has a staff of about 15 people.

“The biggest thing we’re going to do, now (that) we have a bit of critical mass in Halifax, is we can start putting the marketing machine behind it and really getting the word out,” Muise said.

“A one-off operator can’t really afford to do most media type of stuff from newsprint to billboards to radio and TV and bus shelters. Now that we have more stores, we have more dollars to allocate toward advertising.”

While the HRM locations are already operating, Grafton Connor’s holding a grand opening ceremony Saturday for the most recently opened Pizza Pizzas at its Cole Harbour location.

“We’re doing some radio remotes and giving away a bunch of prizes and having bouncy castles and a lot of stuff for the kids,” Muise said.

Grafton Connor is one of the area’s largest restaurateurs, employing about 500 people, many of them at downtown Halifax locations.